


The Light of a Beautiful Sun

by Sorrell



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Families of Choice, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Gen, Past Character Death, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 02:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12761571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorrell/pseuds/Sorrell
Summary: Hopper runs into his ex-wife at the Indianapolis Museum of Natural History in March 1985.





	The Light of a Beautiful Sun

Diane was startled when she saw him across the foyer of the Indianapolis Museum of Natural History, looking almost like he did when they first met more than a decade ago in his flannel shirt and jeans. He had a sheepskin jacket on despite the warmer weather, undoubtedly carrying a gun concealed in a shoulder holster. He was slimmer than she remembered, face well-groomed and not puffy from drinking like it had been in the last days of their marriage, when he couldn’t seem to climb out of the bottle he’d fallen into. He was leaning against a column in the entrance hall, fingers twitching like he was craving a smoke. That part hadn't changed.

He noticed her, of course, standing up straight as she pushed Todd's stroller from the children's play area. He looked at her, eyes wide, but to her great relief he smiled, though the expression was still shadowed. She wasn't sure how he'd react to her even after all this time. 

"Diane?" 

She was nervous and a little breathless to see him. It took a lot of self-control to stop from fidgeting with her wedding set (yellow gold again, with diamonds and pearl instead of sapphire). She didn’t know what he did with her old rings after she gave them back to him. He had wanted her to keep them, but gave in when she insisted. She had a thousand still images of his face in her mind, and the look of sheer anguish on his face when she closed his hand around the two bands was one she would never forget. It was pretty close to how it felt to leave, his section of their lives together boxed up and stored away at his grandfather’s cabin. Their house in the suburbs with the white fence sold to a couple with two teenage boys, a family who had never spent months in the hospital praying for a miracle that didn’t come, had never been at the funeral home picking out a child-sized casket. Sara’s room had been painted over to a neutral cream to make it easier to sell. 

He had bought a trailer, and she had moved to the city to try to lose herself among people who didn’t know her past and eventually found Bill, who helped her feel like a person instead of the torn-up remnants of a war zone, and gave her the strength to be a mother again. To give happiness a try again. Jim’s late night slurred phone calls had tapered off, but her heart clenched to think of him in that isolated trailer, certain that he had yet to buy a bed and was falling asleep in a stupor on the couch, living off coffee, booze and Benny’s burger combos. Their marriage couldn’t survive the grief, but she still loved him and thought of him often. Distance from him had been the only thing she could do to keep from getting pulled under too.

She swallowed back her hesitation as she pushed the stroller close to him. “Hi, Jim. It’s good to see you. You look-“

“Better?” He gave her a wry look, always quick to pick up on other people’s thoughts. 

“Yeah, better.” They both gave a little laugh to relieve the tension.

“And who’s this?” He knelt down in front of the stroller, peering without any sign of grief or awkwardness at her baby, who gazed back at him with a furrowed brow. He had been a few months old the last time they had talked on the phone a year and a half ago, not yet sleeping through the night. Jim gave him one of those big smiles everyone reserves for the youngest of children, which seemed to relax him.

“This is Todd.” She gave him a small smile. “He’s all played out from the kiddie zone”.

“I can see that.” He stood back up. “He’s beautiful, Diane. I’m really happy for you.”

She blinked back some tears as subtly as she could, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

“I meant what I said last time, you know. I don’t regret it, any of it.” He sighed a little. 

“You’re doing okay?” Even if he looked better, well, she remembered weeks of him rolling into work on time after blacking out the night before. 

He nodded. “Yeah, actually, I-“

“Pop?” A delicate-looking girl interrupted uncertainly, edging closer to them. She was a tiny thing, dressed in sneakers and an oversized sweater over a long-sleeved floral dress, bright bangles clacking on her left wrist, dark brown curls tumbling down to her collarbone. She was a few years older than Sara would be, Diane estimated, lanky in that pre-teen way.

Jim’s face lit up in a way Diane hadn’t seen for years- had thought the expression lost forever- and he extended an arm out to pull her into his side. “Hey, honey, bathroom run okay?” 

She rolled her eyes but a small smile was tugging at her lips. “Yes.” She turned her gaze, piercing even behind the round gold frames of her glasses, onto a thunderstruck Diane and a sleepy Todd with curiosity.

“This is my daughter, Jane.” Jim explained, though that explained nothing. 

He continued on before her mind could race off. “I adopted her last November. Jane, this is Diane, my ex-wife.” At that, her expression softened into something solemn and Diane wondered how much she knew of her father’s life before her.

“It’s nice to meet you.” She offered politely but didn’t extend her hand. She looked back up into Jim’s face as if to check that he was all right. That struck Diane as remarkable in a way; she’d never seen a kid so young be so gauging of an adult’s emotions. He brushed a reassuring hand over the top of her head. Their obvious comfort and closeness with each other nearly bowled her over.

“Nice to meet you too, Jane.” Diane replied, stunned but recovering. 

“Hey kid, you wanna check out the gift shop? See if there’s anything you like?” Jim said, releasing her as she nodded enthusiastically.

“Good-bye.” She said to Diane with a curt tilt of her head before she took off, bangles jangling. 

They were quiet for a few moments.

“She had a bad- really bad- home life, and I ended up taking her in a while ago.” Jim offered, voice low. “Feels like we help each other out most of the time, to be honest.” 

“Jim, that’s so wonderful.” Damn it, she was tearing up again. “She looks like she really trusts you.” 

At that, he smiled, a little tinged with pride. “We’ve had some rough spots, but we’re figuring it out as we go. I read about the butterfly room exhibit in the paper and I had the day off, so I thought I’d take her up here.” He trailed off a bit uncertainly, watching Jane move about through the windows of the shop. 

“Well,” Diane started, clearing her throat, “Don’t doubt yourself because you were always an excellent father.” 

He was beginning to look a little choked up now, too. “Thanks, Diane. I’m, I’m trying to be better for her. She deserves to have a good dad after everything she’s been through.” 

This time she did have to brush away a tear. “I know you will be.” 

He turned back to her, glancing down at Todd. “Oh, he’s asleep!”

“Yeah, we should probably get going.” She couldn’t help but marvel at him. He had changed after his stint in Vietnam, but Sara had been a balm to those war wounds. She had thought he’d never come back from the crushed space he had settled into when she had gone. But, like herself, he had found the strength, dredged up from parts unknown, to risk trying again. Jane must have really needed someone. No, not just anyone, but someone only Jim was capable of being, and he rose to meet that challenge. Like always.

“I’m really happy for you two, Jim. It was good to see you.”

He reached out and gave a gentle squeeze to her elbow, and for a second it was just like old times. “You take care now, Diane. Say hi to Bill for me.” 

“I will.” Bill was a good man, and he respected Jim as a large part of her life. He had never once been angry when they’d been woken up by a phone call in the middle of the night, just told Jim that they were going to sleep and hanging up after listening to his numerous slurred apologies. He’d be glad to hear this strange turn his life had taken.

Diane watched him as he headed into the gift shop, his little girl running up to him holding an elephant figurine. They talked for a second and he smiled broadly, ruffling her hair as they made their way to the register. He noticed her watching through the window and gave her a nod as she waved and turned the stroller around to go. The whole encounter felt like a miracle- not the one they had asked for, maybe, but the one they ended up receiving. 

—

“She seemed nice.” El said as they were buckling their seat-belts in the car, her new elephant propped in her lap. He could already imagine it among her growing collection of toys, trinkets, and books, her playing with it and the dumb dinosaur the Wheeler kid had given her. Roary. Rory? She had been disappointed to find out that dinosaurs were extinct but was awestruck at the size of their bones and fossils in the museum. He was so glad he had thought to bring a disposable camera along to get photos of her in the butterfly room. They had been drawn to her, perhaps because of her magnetic abilities, perhaps just another natural gift that she had, calmly resting on her outstretched arm, perching on her head and ignoring everyone else. She beamed at him, shining face captured as he cranked the wheel to the next photo. And the next photo. He'd have to ask Jonathan to develop them for him later. Like hell he was going to trust any one hour photo place.

She carefully put her fake glasses back into their case in the glove compartment. Hopper made her wear them on their outings, though her longer hair alone made her much less distinctive than when she stormed into Big Buy with a buzzcut and a dirt-smeared pink dress, leaves in her socks. Sometimes she forgot to take them off and wore them all the way back into the cabin, laughing when she realized they were still on her face.

“She is.” He smiled a bit to himself. He had been surprised to see her, but it didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. His life had changed too since he last called her on his taped-up but government-bug-free phone during the fucked-up week back in ’83 when Will had vanished. He certainly hadn’t been expecting to see her at a museum on a weekday, but it had turned out to be a pleasant encounter. Hell, _he_ wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for El. The closing of the lab and Doc Owens giving him a birth certificate hadn’t lessened his paranoia much, but he couldn’t have her cooped up for another entire year. They would do little outings like this far away from their small town to tide her over until she could start school in the fall. He had not expected to see his ex-wife as he anxiously waited for El to return from the restroom, picturing her getting snatched as soon as she was out of his eyesight. She had been pestering him to cut down on his cigarettes too, so he couldn’t even do that to soothe his nerves. Diane and baby Todd had proven to be a good distraction.

“I’m glad to see her so happy.” 

“Sara’s mama?” She asked him, touching the blue hair band hidden underneath the bangles Nancy had given her for Christmas, resting across the numbers of her tattoo. 

“Yup, Sara’s mama. Her son’s name is Todd.” 

El didn’t have much experience with babies, but her social coaching shined through as she dutifully said that that was a nice name. Moments like these caught him by surprise, when the depth of his love for her stunned him, this girl who had stumbled after him half-starved out of the freezing woods and rearranged the order of his entire life. 

He still felt like a failure sometimes, whenever he got caught up at work and forgot to signal, or when he gave in to frozen dinners again instead of just having Jonathan (the best cook out of all the Byers) show him how to cook something that wasn’t breakfast food. Diane’s vote of confidence had meant a lot to him. He could always trust her judgment, whether it was on his parenting skills or calling it quits on their marriage. He had felt bitter and abandoned for a long time but in hindsight, Hopper knew she was trying to save herself from becoming like him, a barely functioning-shadow of his former self. El had forced him out of that. He couldn’t go off the deep end when he had a daughter depending on him.

He had thrown Diane’s rings into a box and thrown that box into the cabin’s basement, buried for years under floorboards, dust and drop-cloths. He’ll have to root around and find them, trade them in for something else. Maybe he could get something for El’s birthday. They had had a rousing discussion on New Year’s Eve at the Byers’ with all of her nerd friends about when it should be. They decided on April, for all the symbology of spring and warmth and new beginnings, pink cherry blossoms bursting to life across Japan like that picture in their social studies textbook. The eleventh, of course. No one had even bothered to suggest a different day. Dustin had whined about them not using November until Max told him to shut up.

"11/11 is way too obvious, dummy." She'd said, and the others agreed it'd be overkill. 

They drove along for a bit in silence, the city giving way to trees as the shadows began to grow longer on their way back to Hawkins.

“Pop?” She fiddled with the elephant before she looked at him with her big brown doe eyes. “You’re happy, too?”

He turned to smile at her, curls whipping around her face in the cool breeze from the rolled-down windows, and reached over to take her hand. “Yeah, Ellie, I’m happy too.”

Ain’t that a goddamn miracle.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, please check out my other El & Hopper-centric fic, The First Days, here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13287681
> 
> I woke up yesterday morning and this fic was just in my head, nearly fully-formed, I just had to type it out. 
> 
> Their phone call in S1 really got to me, the crying of her baby made it clear that Diane had moved on and Hopper hadn't. His life is so different with Eleven in S2 that I couldn't help but think what it would be like for her to see him with his newly-forged family.
> 
> Indianapolis doesn't have a separate museum of natural history, just the Indiana State Museum which bundles natural history with other subjects. 
> 
> Diane's character was listed on imdb as 'Diane Hopper' even though she probably changed her last name when she got remarried.
> 
> I blatantly ripped off Hopper's use of "Ellie" when the two of them are in a private space from heyhester's marvelous fic, "We Teach Ourselves to Walk". If you haven't read it, go do that. 
> 
> I feel like "Papa" has been ruined for the both of them, and my dad always called my grandfather "Pop" so it was a better word choice for me.
> 
> Comments and kudos are much appreciated. <3


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